Argentina Reportedly Weighs Letting Mutual Funds Hold Crypto

TL;DR

• Funds could invest in crypto assets.
• Securities could be tokenized on blockchain.
• Still a draft, not yet law.
• Awaits Milei’s signature, then Congress.
• Argentina leads Latin America in adoption.
• CNV rules still needed to apply.

A draft deregulation bill written inside Federico Sturzenegger’s Ministry of Deregulation and State Transformation would, for the first time, expressly allow Argentine mutual funds (fondos comunes de inversión, or FCI) to allocate part of their portfolios to crypto assets. The catch sits in one word: draft. The text has not been published officially, it still awaits President Javier Milei’s signature, and it has not reached Congress. Government sources have declined to confirm the contents while the text is still being modified. As of publication the bill exists only as a draft of more than 144 pages, structured in 11 titles, that has not been assigned a bill number, entered Congress’s public record, or been released by the government, so there is no official text to link yet. The provisions below are drawn from that draft as obtained and reported by Argentine outlets, including Infobae and El Cronista. The official version will become available in Congress’s record once the executive formally submits it. What the draft would permit The financial chapters, which modify the mutual funds law (Ley 24.083) and the capital markets regime, focus on bringing distributed-ledger technology into the market and widening what regulated vehicles can hold. As reported by El Cronista, the draft in its current form would:

• Allow FCI, both open and closed, to invest part of their portfolios in virtual assets, provided it fits each fund’s stated investment policy. This is not expressly permitted today.
• Create funds for “qualified investors” that are exempt from the standard diversification limits applied to retail-facing funds.
• Authorize negotiable securities, including shares, negotiable obligations and debt instruments, to be issued, stored, transferred and traded using distributed-ledger technology.
• Recognize the legal validity of smart contracts and of pledges and warrants executed through them.
• Permit virtual assets to serve as collateral, with a mechanism for a judge to order the seizure of pledged crypto through the exchange after a default outside a consumer relationship.
• Establish that client crypto, funds and securities held by brokers stay separate from the intermediary’s own estate, protecting them if the broker goes bankrupt.

The draft would also ask Congress to declare a six-month administrative emergency and delegate legislative powers to the executive, the same structure the government used with the Ley Bases. Why Argentina is fertile ground for this The proposal lands in the country with the deepest grassroots crypto use in the region. In its 2025 Latin America analysis, blockchain-analytics firm Chainalysis ranked Argentina second in the region by transaction volume, at roughly $93.9 billion between July 2024 and June 2025. Most of that activity is not trading in volatile tokens but demand for dollar-pegged stablecoins, which made up more than half of all exchange purchases made in Argentine pesos over that period. In its 2024 report, the same firm put Argentina’s stablecoin share of transaction volume near 61.8%, among the highest in Latin America. The driver is macroeconomic, not technological. Persistent inflation, currency controls and a peso that has lost most of its value against the dollar have pushed households toward stablecoins as a way to hold value. A law that lets regulated funds hold these assets would formalize an exposure that millions of Argentines already carry informally. How it would change who regulates what The draft would redistribute authority between the Central Bank (BCRA) and the National Securities Commission (CNV), with the BCRA supervising cryptocurrencies, tokenized assets and the registry infrastructure behind them. That would rework a framework the CNV has been building since 2024. Under Law 27,739, the CNV became the authority that registers and supervises virtual-asset service providers (PSAVs), a role it implemented through General Resolution 1058/2025. The distinction matters: the CNV regulates the providers, not the assets themselves, unless a virtual asset is a publicly offered security. The commission has also already moved on tokenization through General Resolution 1087/2025, published in October 2025, and its standing public warning still reminds investors that its authority reaches only registered providers. How this existing structure would be divided with the BCRA is among the points the government says is still unresolved. What is not yet established Two claims circulating alongside the draft lack any primary source. Projected inflow figures, including a widely repeated market-size estimate, are analyst and media projections rather than official numbers. A suggested alignment with Europe’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework appears in no official document tied to this bill. Even the confirmed provisions carry a limit. FCI crypto allocation would depend on rules the CNV has yet to write, and would not open the door to unrestricted purchase of any crypto asset. An enabling law would start the process, not finish it. What would confirm this is becoming law The signal to watch is narrow: Milei signing the text, which La Nación reported it still awaits, and the government formally submitting it to Congress, which officials say could happen within weeks. Publication of the official version would replace today’s draft-based reporting and settle the open questions, including the CNV and BCRA split. Set against that is the government’s recent record. Several bills authored by this ministry have stalled for lack of votes, and its property and land-reform package was postponed again in the Senate shortly before this draft surfaced. Writing a crypto-friendly reform into a draft is quick. Passing it depends on a signature that has not come and a Congress that has already slowed similar efforts.